For decades, this painting of a Native American sachem (chief or leader) was misidentified as a portrait of Niantic leader Ninigret II; recent scholarship indicates that the subject may be Robin Cassacinamon, an influential Pequot leader. Cassacinamon was known to have been a friend of the Winthrop family of Connecticut, through whom this painting descended. The tribe originally occupied the basin of the Pequot River (now Connecticut’s Thames River), but the artist generalizes the setting in an idyllic manner. The stylization of the landscape, along with classical pose of the sachem, suggests that the artist, although nominally trained, was familiar with European art.

Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. “Selection VII”. Providence: Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design,1977.

Other publications

Fisher, Julie A. and David J. Silverman. “Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in the Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country”. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.